Hating Every Picture I Take and Why That Means I Have to Keep Going

I started photography about seven months ago in June of 2016. It started out as something to help jazz up my articles for Movie Pilot or Now Loading. I figured if I get sent to press events that it would be nice if I took my own pictures instead of having to pull from the internet. I borrowed a camera for a press conference for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and I sort of fell in love with that particular camera.

I finally caved and bought my own camera and a 50mm prime lens in June and just went full speed ahead from there. From the moment I started, however, I ran into a problem that happens whenever I try something new and creative.

I hated everything I did.

Santa Clarita Comic Con | October 1, 2016

I wouldn’t say that I’m a particularly ambitious person. The fact that I am where I am now in life is testament to that (but that’s a story for another time). For certain things, however, I have severely high expectations of myself. I don’t know if that’s an inherent trait or if being raised by tiger parents had a hand in it, but I always want to be absolutely amazing out of the gate. While that’s a good motivator at times, it doesn’t leave much room for satisfaction.

I loathed every picture I took, but I always showed them to people hoping they’d say I was doing alright. I needed someone else to constantly tell me I was doing alright (and I still do). The weird part is that I always found myself prefacing my pictures with “well I only started recently” or something to that effect. I was setting their expectations low in hopes that they’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Under promise and over deliver, right?

My internal dislike for what I churn out was at a point where I avoided using words like “photographer” or “photography” which sounds super weird now that I step back and think about it. My reasoning was that those were fancy words reserved for people who actually knew what they were doing. Me? I was just a guy with a camera taking pictures. Somehow in my mind that was a completely different thing and calling myself a “photographer” was a display of hubris. I didn’t deserve the word.

There would be brief moments where I think I took a good picture. Then I would see pictures posted by the photographers I followed and idolized and went back to thinking that I’m awful at everything. Common wisdom would say that that’s a very dangerous thing to do.

Everyone is running their own race and comparing yourself to others is a path to ruin. The healthier way to go about it was to compare with myself or something. There’s only one problem with that:

I struggled with noticing any improvement.

Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees

See that picture of Spider-Man? At first I thought it was pretty cool. A part of me still thinks it’s pretty cool. Most of me now realizes that it doesn’t hit the Rule of Thirds very well and maybe I overused negative space. There’s also probably a lot of other things wrong with it and at some point I found myself thinking that, for lack of better language, the composition was absolute sh*t.

Never mind that I had just read about composition and was still studying it. Never mind that this stuff takes education backed by practice. There was a mountain of tiny details in the picture that I absolutely could not look away from.

I couldn’t take a step back and keep it in perspective that I just started and maybe I’m not doing as poorly as I think. That’s a thought I have trouble convincing myself even now.

I’m the type of person to lose interest in things I’m not immediately good at. I’m inherently very lazy and if I don’t get something immediately and actually have to work for it then I throw in the towel.

I run away from things the moment they get difficult. I’ve been doing it all my life.

As a kid, I wanted to do Tae Kwon Do. I didn’t even to my yellow belt. In middle school, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. I even managed to convince my parents to shell out their hard earned money to buy me an electric guitar. I quit that within the span of a few months. In high school, I took up archery because I wanted to try a shooting sport but my parents aren’t fans of guns. That lasted longer than the guitar but I quit that in less than a year.I can throw out a litany of hobbies and dreams I gave up on because I realized that the reality of it was more difficult than expected. I’m having that mental fight with myself as we speak when it comes to taking pictures.

I want to quit. I feel like quitting all the time, actually.

I’ve been doing this for seven months and because I’m not shooting at the same level as the professional photographers I follow I want to quit. That is hilariously irrational which is me in a nutshell if I’m being perfectly honest here. The fact that I’m still trying is nothing short of a miracle. Who knows, I might quit before 2017 is out.

Right now, I’m fighting myself tooth and nail to keep going. I want to still be taking pictures a year from now, two years from now, and even further out than that. I want to keep going with something for once.

I’ve never stuck to anything in my entire life. I just want there to be one thing that I carry with me for the long haul. I’m trying that with my writing and I’m trying with photography.

I have this thin hope that if I can build the muscle of sticking to something that I’ll be able to break my mental cycle of settling for what’s easy and what’s safe. I have no idea if it’ll actually work, but I’m giving it a shot anyway.

Here’s hoping I write a positive follow up to this in a couple of years.